In Colorado, a team of resaerchers led by Douglas R. Kauffman and including Jay Thakkar, Rajan Siva, Christopher Matranga, Paul Ohodnicki, Chenjie Zeng, and Rongchao Jin, writing in ACS, focused in on the production of industrially-relevant chemicals from CO2, using renewable energy inputs. “We utilize Au25 nanoclusters as renewably powered CO2 conversion electrocatalysts with CO2 → CO reaction rates between 400 and 800 L of CO2 per gram of catalytic metal per hour and product selectivities between 80 and 95%. These performance metrics correspond to conversion rates approaching 0.8–1.6 kg of CO2 per gram of catalytic metal per hour.”
Gndings? “Specifically, we show the following: (1) all electrochemical CO2 conversion systems will produce a net increase in CO2 emissions if they do not integrate with renewable-energy sources, (2) catalyst loading vs activity trends can be used to tune process rates and product distributions, and (3) state-of-the-art renewable-energy technologies are sufficient to power larger-scale, tonne per day CO2 conversion systems.”
Renewables all the time? The researchers said that “daytime photovoltaic-powered CO2 conversion was demonstrated for 12 h and we mimicked low-light or nighttime operation for 24 h with a solar-rechargeable battery.”
